Building Facebook engagement

Facebook users are increasing every year and the platform’s growth shows no signs of slowing down. As a result, over 2.5 million websites have integrated with Facebook. This gives them the chance to showcase their business, keep their fans updated on their latest news, promote their products, and build key customer relationships.

As businesses become more customer-centric they can deliver a degree of personalization, and in turn, the customer experience changes.

Relationships with social media followers, fans, and potential customers become critical. Facebook has evolved into a broad public forum where people can “like” pages, ask questions, comment on posts, and ideally, engage with a brand.

But this doesn’t happen automatically. Your business must be proactive. Here are our top three tips on how to do just that.

Tip 1: Start a conversation

Pull in followers with questions and calls-to-action to initiate conversation and generate more likes, comments, and clicks.

People are much more likely to interact with your post if you address them directly. Tell them what you want them to do. For example, you might say “Like this post if you’ve ever been to San Diego” or “Tell us which one is your favorite.”

This is also your chance to build a more personal relationship with followers—talk to them as if you were speaking with someone one-on-one.

And don’t forget to keep the conversation going. You’ll gain valuable feedback if you address customer questions and comments, and you’ll have the chance to reinforce your brand when you respond.

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Tip 2: Keep your Facebook posts short

In the past five years, the average person’s attention span has decreased by more than 31% to a total of 8.25 seconds, according to StatisticBrain.com.

That’s less than the attention span of a goldfish. So, when people see big blocks of text, they cringe, and scroll on without taking a second to read a word, let alone engage.

Facebook posts with 80 characters or fewer receive 66% higher engagement, and posts with as few as 40 characters receive even higher—86% engagement (SocialMediaToday.com).

Keep it short.

Tip 3: Use imagery

Pictures speak louder than words, and this is very clear in the statistics for Facebook engagement.

Photos receive 53% more “likes,” more than twice the amount of comments, and 84% more clicks. To get your customers’ full attention, fully engage them with the immersive experience of a video or a captivating image.

Steven J. Ramirez is chief executive officer of San Francisco-based Beyond the Arc Inc., a customer experience and advanced analytics firm that helps financial services clients differentiate themselves in the marketplace. The agency has been recognized as one of the Top 100 Most Promising Big Data Solution Providers by CIO Review magazine. Ramirez can be reached at web@beyondthearc.net. Beyond the Arc can be followed on Twitter at @BeyondTheArc